Home by the Sea

by JoAnn Ross

  “You know we’re all concerned about you, Grace.”

  “I’ve never doubted that, Tina. Not even when I saw you and Robert having that little tête-à-tête in the hallway before the pageant last night.”

  The agent’s face paled only slightly, but Lucas, who was watching the exchange carefully, noticed her body stiffen and her eyes dart nervously toward Geraldine Manning, who was watching the exchange with interest.

  “He wanted to speak with me. What was I to do?” Tina seemed to be asking the room in general. “If I’d refused and tried to walk away, he might have made a scene. And that certainly wouldn’t have helped the image rebuilding we’re supposed to be doing at this conference.”

  “Image rebuilding?” Grace’s tone was still tightly controlled.

  Her temper, Lucas noted with interest, was less so. Her remarkable eyes flashed that green he was accustomed to seeing when he kissed her. Oh yes, he thought with satisfaction, Grace Fairfield was definitely a woman of strong passions. She was like a volcano simmering beneath an arctic glacier, and he, for one, was definitely looking forward to being there when all that ice melted.

  “I hadn’t realized my image needed an overhaul.”

  “That’s because you’ve never had to think about those things,” the agent countered. “You’ve just written your books, while Robert and I were out busting our butts to sell them to publishers and the public.”

  “I see.” Her eyes were frost. Icicles were now dripping from her words. Lucas was fascinated by the transformation to ice queen. “How fortunate I had the two of you to do all that for me. Allowing me to live in my little romantic fantasy world—”

  “Gracie,” he interrupted smoothly, “would you like a cup of coffee? Or tea?”

  Realizing that her control was becoming ragged at the edges, Grace managed a grateful smile at him for having come to her rescue. “Coffee sounds terrific.”

  “You’ve got it.” He poured the coffee from a silver pot. As he placed it onto the mahogany butler’s table in front of the sofa, she caught a glimpse of his shoulder holster and felt a now-familiar chill skim over her.

  “And you’ve got to taste these cinnamon rolls,” Jamie insisted. She put one on a gilt-rimmed porcelain plate, then placed the plate on the table beside the cup. “They’re simply scrumptious.”

  The spicy, tantalizing scent wafted upward. “I’m on a diet,” Grace demurred.

  “Oh, that’s ridiculous,” Jamie argued. “You look marvelous just the way you are. Besides, men prefer women with curves. It gives them something to hold on to in bed. Isn’t that true, Lucas?”

  “Works for me,” he agreed with a bold grin as he took in those voluptuous curves in question. Today’s suit was a tailored navy blue with white trim. Her blouse was white silk and fastened with pearl buttons that had him thinking about her milkmaid’s skin.

  When she sat down and crossed her legs with a swish of silk, Lucas felt an urge to touch her, just a skim of a fingertip along a smooth thigh.

  Grace took a sip of the French roast coffee and drank in the sight of Lucas, who’d reclaimed the wing chair.

  He was conservatively dressed again this morning, in gray slacks, a blue shirt, navy blazer and tie, but his dark hair, which was tied back again at the nape of his neck, along with that crescent-shaped scar on his cheek, gave an underlying impression of mystery and danger. One she found all too intriguing.

  Afraid he might pick up on her thoughts, Grace turned her attention to the plate Jamie had placed in front of her. The scent was nearly as seductive as Lucas’s kisses.

  Enticed, she took a bite. And practically swooned as flavors and textures flowed across her tongue, stimulating all her taste buds. “Oh, this is delicious.” She nearly moaned with pleasure. As she took another melt-in-the-mouth bite, Grace decided that the sweet roll undoubtedly contained enough sugar and fat to have the food police ban it for life.

  The caffeine from the coffee began to kick in, blowing away the foggy remnants of the dreams, clearing her mind. Grace was licking the white frosting from her fingers when Geraldine Manning decided to enter the discussion.

  “I don’t want to sound as if I’m taking sides, Grace,” she said, more carefully than her usual rapid-fire approach to conversation. “But Tina does have a point.” She took a cigarette from the pack in her purse. As he’d done last night, George leaped forward to light it.

  “Romance publishing isn’t about romance. It’s about the bottom line. And, unfortunately, image plays a part in a writer’s popularity. For years everyone has assumed that Robert was the one actually writing the Roberta Grace books—”

  “Everyone?”

  “Well, perhaps not everyone.” The publisher backtracked a bit. “But it’s certainly the prevailing opinion.”

  “That was my mistake.” Grace frowned and ran her finger around the gold rim of the cup. “One I have every intention of correcting. Beginning today.” Her tone was stiff. Her shoulders, Lucas noticed, were even suffer. He decided it was time to end this conversation.

  “I’d like to spend a few minutes with Ms. Fairfield going over today’s agenda,” he said. “Why don’t the rest of you go on ahead? It won’t take long.”

  Appearing more than happy to leave Grace and Lucas alone, Jamie jumped up immediately. Although Grace had a suspicion that Tina and Geraldine weren’t all that eager to leave, Lucas deftly and politely hustled them from the suite. Just before the door closed behind them, she heard Jamie cheerfully admiring Dalai’s dominatrix costume.

  “Oh, I would have loved to have heard Geraldine’s answer to that one,” Grace murmured.

  Lucas laughed. A little pool of silence settled over them.

  “You’re carrying a gun,” she said finally.

  “Never leave home without it.”

  “Are you expecting to shoot someone today?”

  “I’d just as soon not.”

  “But you will. If you have to.”

  “In a heartbeat.”

  Grace thought about that. “That detective was right. You are very good at your job.”

  “You’ve come to that decision because I’m carrying?”

  “No. It was your eyes.”

  He arched a dark brow. “My eyes?”

  “They seem calm most of the time, almost lazy. But they’re taking in everything. I was watching you watching Tina and Geraldine, and it was almost as if I could see the continual click of a mental camera shutter.”

  “Very good.” He lifted his cup of cold coffee in a salute. “You’re very observant.”

  “I’m a writer. It comes with the territory. Sort of like carrying guns comes with being a bodyguard.”

  A bodyguard. On a distant level, she was still waiting to wake up and discover that she’d dreamed this entire frightening scenario. As mental pictures of last night’s shooting came crashing to the front of her mind again, Grace closed her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I just need a minute.”

  “Take your time.” Because he couldn’t refrain from touching another second, Lucas lifted her off the sofa, gathered her into his arms and ran his hand over the smooth crown of her hair.

  She’d pulled it back into that tidy, efficient knot again today, but Lucas could remember all too well how seductive she’d looked last night, with it swirling loose around her shoulders like a tawny cloud, her eyes wide with passion.

  “I don’t have any time.” She rested her forehead against his chest. “I’m due downstairs and we still haven’t gotten around to discussing our agenda.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” His palms moved down her neck, his fingers soothing out knotted muscles as he had last night “I just used that as an excuse to clear everyone out. I could tell you were getting tense, and I figured, since I’d been put in charge of taking care of your body, that the least I could do is send you downstairs feeling relaxed and loose.”

  His touch was heaven. It was agony. It also made her knees weak in that
now familiar way. But it still wasn’t enough.

  Lucas made her feel things she’d never felt before. He fascinated her; he made her want to toss caution to the four winds, throw herself into his arms and discover firsthand the passion his eyes, his lips, his touch promised. But most of all, she wanted him to help her forget that her life was in danger.

  “I can think of a better way to relax me.”

  His smile was slow, seductive and pleased. “Oh darlin’,” he murmured as he caught her chin between his fingers. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  When his lips touched hers, Grace slid her arms beneath his blazer, excited by the ripple of muscle beneath her splayed fingers. Passion rose quickly, as it always seemed to do with Lucas.

  “I need to touch you.” His words were ripped from his throat with a groan as he reached beneath her jacket and tugged her white silk blouse free of her waistband.

  “Yes.” She was racing into a smoky world. “Oh, please.” She heard the rasp of callused flesh against silk, felt her breasts swell painfully beneath his palms, then gasped in pleasure as a roughened fingertip scraped against a tingling nipple.

  Grace had never known she could feel so much. She clung to him desperately, her avid hands moving fretfully over his back. When her stroking hand touched the strap of his shoulder holster, a panicky reality came crashing down on her like a torrent of icy water, drowning the flames.

  “It’s okay,” he soothed, when he felt her heart stutter beneath his palm. Felt her body tense and her satiny flesh turn cold and pebbly.

  Frustrated and aching, and angry at himself for not having realized that Grace might not find the idea of a pistol conducive to seduction, Lucas retrieved his hands and willed his mind to something as close to sanity as he could manage while his body continued to throb painfully.

  Timing, he thought wryly, was everything.

  “Don’t be afraid.” He cupped her cheek, his warm gaze meant to reassure. “I promise not to let anyone hurt you, Grace.” He bent his head again and brushed his lips against hers. “You have to trust me.”

  “I do.” The words wafted on a shivery sigh from her lips to his. In contrast to the violence the gun and holster represented, his lips were heartbreakingly tender.

  Grace trusted Lucas to protect her from whoever had written her those letters. Whoever, as impossible as it seemed, might want to kill her. She did worry about who was going to protect her from him, and even more to the point, from herself and her own unruly yearnings.

  “If I don’t get downstairs right away, they’ll all undoubtedly come back up here to check and make certain I haven’t been murdered.” She sighed again. “I’m surprised Geraldine didn’t have you take the hair dryer out of the bathroom so I couldn’t accidentally electrocute myself in the bathtub.”

  “Good point.” He pulled a small tape recorder out of his jacket pocket and clicked it on. “Note to yourself. More accidents happen in the bathroom than any other room. In the interest of protection, you should not let Gracie bathe alone.”

  Her answering laugh expelled the rest of her tension. “You really are incorrigible.”

  “That’s what my grandma Fancy always used to say. Right before she’d drag me out to the woodshed.” He put a hand out, silently advising Grace to wait until he’d checked out the hallway. “All clear.”

  Grace tried to imagine anyone dragging this man anywhere he didn’t want to go, and failed. “Your grandmother must be a formidable woman.”

  “Oh, she is. Her people are from the Scottish Highlands. All wild folk. Their blood flows in her veins. All us Kincaids are terrified of Fancy. She might not be any bigger than a New York minute, but she can wield a willow switch with the best of them.”

  Grace wondered what it was about Lucas that he could make her crazy one minute, then turn around and have her feeling so relaxed and comfortable with him the next.

  “That’s something I would probably pay to see.”

  “I’m getting the feeling that despite your cream puff exterior, you can be a cruel-hearted woman from time to time, Gracie.” He grinned down at her. “Fancy’s going to love you.”

  Grace thought again what a contradiction this man seemed to be. On the one hand he was capable of shooting another person, but on the other, he seemed to have no trouble professing love and affection for his family. His colorful grandmother, in particular.

  Grace also decided it was too bad that once the conference was over and Lucas was on his way to Alaska and she to New York, it was unlikely Fancy Kincaid and she would ever meet.

  CHAPTER 7

  “OH, NO.” They’d no sooner exited the elevator than Grace saw a woman clad in a pink silk suit trimmed in black marching toward her. The jacket strained over high firm breasts that Grace knew were the result of last year’s “fluffing up.”

  “Grace, darling!” She went up on the toes of her skyscraper stiletto sandals and kissed Grace’s cheek, enveloping her in a suffocating cloud of patchouli. “I’ve been frantic ever since I heard about your near death experience.” Her voice was thick with a Southern accent Lucas recognized right away as feigned.

  “I wouldn’t exactly say near death,” Grace murmured.

  “That’s our Grace.” The smile curving the woman’s glossy, rose-tinted lips did not quite reach her hard blue eyes. “Always so understated. If anyone ever shot at me, why, I’d have to take to my bed for a week.” She pressed a manicured hand against her silicone enhanced chest as she looked up at Lucas. “You must be the bodyguard.”

  He exchanged a quick glance with Grace, who rolled her eyes, as if suggesting this was what she’d been afraid of all along.

  “Lucas, this is Anne Kilgallen.”

  “The Queen of Romance,” the woman elaborated as she smiled up at him.

  “Anne, this is Lucas Kincaid. And he’s not a bodyguard. He’s an old friend—”

  “Oh, I know, darling, I’ve heard that story. And of course we all know that’s exactly what it is. A story. To try to keep this horrible threat against your life hushed up.” She placed a hand on Lucas’s sleeve. “Don’t worry.” Her voice lowered intimately. “I promise not to breathe a word to anyone.”

  “That’s very considerate of you, ma’am.” Lucas smiled blandly as her pink-tipped fingers stroked his arm. “But I’m afraid you’re mistaken—”

  “Oh, really,” she said with a trill of a laugh Grace suspected she’d spent years perfecting, “you two may as well drop the charade. Since no one is going to believe it. After all,” she said, derision sharpening the saccharine magnolia tones, “Mr. Kincaid isn’t the type of man a woman like you would be involved with. No offense intended, darling.”

  “None taken,” Grace replied, her smile as fake as her adversary’s. “How are you doing? Do you have a book out?” It was petty to ask, since now that she thought of it, Grace realized she hadn’t seen a new novel from the writer in three years. But after that crack about her inability to attract a man like Lucas, she couldn’t resist.

  “Not at the moment. I’ve been in the process of changing agents. And publishers. As a matter of fact,” she said, sotto voce, as if sharing a deep dark secret, “Geraldine Manning has been courting me to come over to Penbrook. If I’ve told her once, I’ve told her a thousand times that I do not want to collaborate with your former spouse, yet will she listen?” Diamond earrings winked as she shook her head. “She just keeps raising the offer.”

  “Geraldine has asked you to collaborate with Robert?” Blue eyes widened with fake innocence. “Why yes… Oh, dear.” Her lips turned down in an equally false moue. “Didn’t he tell you?”

  “Robert’s career is no longer any business of mine.” Or wouldn’t be, once the courts gave her the right to the name she’d worked so hard to establish.

  “Damn. He didn’t tell you.” Another shake of her head. “Why, that scoundrel. He assured me that you knew Buffy and Geraldine were considering me to take over the Roberta Grace pseudonym….”

 
; “That’s a bit premature,” Grace said mildly. Lucas admired the way she managed to pull herself together so quickly after having the floor pulled out from under her. “Since Robert doesn’t have legal rights to the name.”

  “True. But I was led to believe that Penbrook Press does.”

  This was the first she’d heard of that. Grace hadn’t known it was possible to feel hot and cold at the same time. “I think you must be mistaken,” she said, with a calm that she was a very long way from feeling.

  “Perhaps. Gracious, it’s all such a mess, isn’t it?” Anne’s voice was thick with a sympathy that Grace didn’t buy for a minute. “I truly believe that your would-be assassin shot at the wrong half of the Roberta Grace team, darling. Why, if I were you, after all he’d done to me—”

  “But you’re not”

  “Not what?”

  “Not me,” Grace stated.

  “Well, of course I’m not.” This time the hand went to her throat, where more diamonds flashed. “And I do hope I didn’t cause you any distress with my little news flash. Especially since I haven’t made up my mind. I mean, why should I write under your name, when my own is legendary in this business?”

  “That’s a very good point.” Grace’s tone was friendly, her smile once again as false as the one being directed her way.

  “On the other hand, Geraldine’s offer is more than generous,” Anne mused. “Which it would have to be, of course, to get me to work with that man.” She turned back toward Lucas. “He must be going crazy, thinking of you guarding our Grace.”

  Her husky voice was thick with sexual innuendo. Grace found it interesting that only moments earlier Anne had implied a woman like her couldn’t interest such a man, but was now suggesting they had an intimate relationship.

  Anne smiled up at Lucas. “If I’m ever in need of a bodyguard, I will definitely keep you in mind, Lucas Kincaid.” She skimmed a glance down him and sighed dramatically. “It would almost be worth getting shot at.”